With search engine algorithms ever changing, it is difficult to know what will be considered valuable by search engines in the future. In saying that, we touch upon a very common discussion regarding link building; is it better to build a large quantity of back links or spend more time to get better quality back links?

If you are involved in any kind of search engine optimisation you should constantly be considering how to spend your time to get the best results and, if you are as busy as most people, you may not be able to use both methods of link building. Now many online marketers may still be advising you that the number of links is what search engines value the most, and they will proceed to build as many links as possible, as quickly as possible, and by any means necessary. But, with the release of Google’s updated Historical Data Patent in March this year, it is clear that this is not the case.

In this document it is stated, among many other things, that the dates on which the back links first appeared for the search engine are taken into account when valuing a website. This means that if too many links are detected at times very near to each other, the algorithm may consider these links are the result of SPAM.

In addition, when building a large number of back links without considering where these links are coming from, there is always the possible issue that these links can be dropped at any time, for any reason. In the patent document, this is suggested as a means of devaluing a website. If back links disappear to quickly, the search engine may consider your website to have become “stale”, or non-valuable to its readers.

Aside from the rate of back link build-up, search engines also consider the content of the site from which a link is received. The more valuable the content on the link source website, the more valuable the link to your site. And the more related the content is to your site, the better.

Similarly, when considering the source of a back link you must take into account the number of outgoing links on that page. A website that has more than 100 outgoing links will almost always be selling links. If you were a search engine, you would ignore links on pages like this, or perhaps even penalize the target sites for being linked to from such a page. Google takes this into account, and so should we.

Search engines are continuously finding ways to find and filter out “invaluable” links. And with the constant updates to search engine algorithms you don’t know what kind of back link will be devalued in the future. Even if the number of links was more valuable previously it certainly is not the case anymore. So how can we overcome this?

I’m glad you asked.

There is one kind of link that will always be considered valuable by search engines – natural quality links. As much as we may try, we cannot imitate natural back links from quality websites, so any links that is given freely from a highly valued site are search engine GOLD.

The best way to build these links is to have quality content on your website. If you are an expert on a topic (which should be the case if you are creating the website) the quality content will simply be your knowledge on that topic. Once you have this content on your site, people will automatically link to it because it will be considered an authority on the topic. And if you are an expert on a topic and have some content to use that is nowhere else on the net or has very little competition, then the traffic to your site will increase massively.

This can take time, however, because it takes time to create great quality content and time for this content to spread. But once you have these links, they will become the most valuable part of your online marketing campaign.

The great thing about these, apart from their value, is that you won’t need to worry about getting too many links too quickly because if they are organic (meaning you haven’t created them using a marketing method), they will automatically be created at a natural pace.

We can definitely help this process by posting your content to quality websites suited specifically for this purpose, such as article websites or journals. However, when doing this you must be careful not to get carried away with the links inside the content. Some article sites already limit the number of self-serving links you can have in an article on their site but for those that don’t you should impose those limitations yourself. Why? Because if the back link is meant to be natural then there wouldn’t be that many self-serving back links on a single page.

Another benefit from a natural back link is that they usually come from websites that have both quality content and content related to your website, which, as I mentioned earlier, are taken into account by search engines valuing your website.

Now, while it is virtually impossible to know what search engines will value in the future, it is fairly safe to assume that a natural back link received from a quality website with content related to your website will always be the most valuable link available on the internet.

What do you think?

Well we all know Alex is the power house of the Web Profits blog space. A lot of great content, value, and insight that I am sure we have all enjoyed.

My name is Jason May, and I have been meaning to contribute in here for a while now, simply offering my own experiences and perspective on the big wild world of online business.

I consult for online business strategy here at Web Profits, and in general style up the place! I hope I can give some value, and I respect all feedback and welcome comments.

And so there is never a day that the Internet does not impress me these days…

And I know, that come 10.30pm in the evening, I should already have eaten dinner. Something nice, healthy, green. But I am male, I am single, and I do not like supermarkets.

So what can a guy do?

Yes I can cook the basics, and I can order all of my groceries online. Click, click and they deliver to my door for $10 no matter how little or how much I buy, but no…

The other night I felt like pizza. Have you ever been to Pizza Hut online?

Bang! You can open the Pizza Hut website, have your eyes closed, and you will still know that you are on the Pizza Hut website!

This website packs a visual punch. Hit and smacked down with the Pizza Hut redness right from the first second of opening the site. It is just so well done.

Select your country, and away you go. So what does the website want you to do?

Order. And order now. Check out the biggest, shiniest, coolest, most attractive button anyone has every seen, and it just hums there at the right top focal point on the page. And if you are still not sure, the text copy on the button gives added incentive… No credit card needed

How could anyone refuse to hit that thing!

Ah… Well, you may be checking out the large panel, fast rotation, dynamic specials graphics, showcasing whats on offer. But what does this achieve?

That’s right. Extra salivation. An elevation of your appetite to a fever pitch. You get hungry looking at this website.

Of course you are going to order, the website almost demands that you do!

The order process is a painless, it’s quick, easy, 4 steps. Fill in your delivery address, choose your pizza and sides, and then follow through to send the order.

The first time I did this I waited about 30 minutes and then called the Pizza Hut order phone number to check that they had actually received my order… At the time it just seemed too easy. I was looking for the catch.

“Yes Mr May, you have an order placed tonight which should be delivered soon, how can I help…”

Um.. Just as they finished the sentence, my door buzzer sounded. “Hello?” “Yes pizza?”

Clockwork automation.

So check out this website, even if you are eating healthier than me. The Pizza Hut website has been expertly crafted.

The flash overlay when you order is fantastic. So functional. The site delivers a true Pizza Hut restaurant experience… but online, from your sofa. Easy, straight forward, dynamic, intuitive, and attractive.

And notice how a new screen pops open when you start the order process. There is no way but forward through the order.

Well I guess pizza once in a while is ok, I mean, what chance do we stand against that type of website design?

Watching the US presidential coverage on the news always provides entertainment, especially considering how intense the democratic nomination was. While watching one of these segments they mentioned that Barack Obama had raised 100% of his campaign funding through online contributions.

He has not accepted any campaign contributions from large companies or lobbyists. Instead, Barack Obama’s campaign has been one of the most profitable in history, with the majority of campaign contributions made online through over a million small contributions.

In fact, Barack Obama has raised nearly $200 million online, with a record $55 million raised in February alone, or nearly $2 million per day.

That hit my button.

It was a Saturday night and I immediately jumped on my laptop and brought up www.barackobama.com. The next hour was just spent in admiration of the level of detail and expertise implemented by Barack Obama’s online marketing team.

When you know what to look for in a good website and marketing campaign, you can really start to appreciate the level of skill behind his entire online marketing strategy.

Although there are way too many positive elements to cover in this article, here are 6 major strategies which really make the Barack Obama online marketing campaign a raging success:

1. The First Time You Visit Your Site You Are Asked To Join His Mailing List

Before you can view any part of Obama’s site you are taken to a page where you are asked for your name and address:

Notice how he makes it very easy to subscribe, only asking for your email address and zip code. Also notice that the main call to action button ‘learn more’ is in red. This is done to attract the eye to the primary action that he wants you to take on this page. Importantly, you do not have to subscribe to view the rest of his website, you can simply click on ‘skip signup’ to visit the main website – but this is not the focus.

Of course I entered my details in to see what happened, and was taken to this page:

What’s impressive is the wording they use, such as ‘Join the movement’ and ‘this campaign is about you’. They are giving you reasons why you should fill out the form.

So the first step was a small yes, just email and zip code. The next step is to enter your full name, address and phone number. If all of this information was asked of you on the first page, the response would be much lower. Remember, getting people to say ‘yes’ on a higher number of small commitments is better than asking them to say ‘yes’ on one large commitment.

After you enter your details you are taken to this page:

There are 3 main actions he wants you to take on the ‘thank you’ page. The most important, as we can tell from the red button, is to ‘donate now’ (which I will cover shortly). The others are to register to vote and to visit the home page. Every image on the page is a link, ensuring that a visitor will be taken to a different page no matter what they click. The site makes it very easy to act.

Of course, once you subscribe you will start to receive high value emails from him driving you back to his website to take action.

2. Every Web Page Furthers the Primary Action to ‘Donate Now’

No matter what page you are visiting on the Barack Obama website, the red ‘donate now’ button draws your attention. It is essentially the only red image on a blue, grey and white website, which is a very subtle, yet powerful method of encouraging people to take the action.

When you click on the ‘donate now’ button you are taken to the following page:

This is a landing page designed to compel the visitor to donate to the Obama campaign. When you visit the page a very short video automatically starts playing, with very relevant information which explains WHY you should donate to his campaign.

By giving options for the donation amount, it makes it easy for people to make a decision on how much to donate. The website also pre-populates the fields with the information you entered on the previous page so that only minimum additional action is required of the person making the donation. The main call to action button is a red graphic, bringing attention to the action he wants you to take. Again, you have a ‘skip donation’ link at the top of the page in case you do not want to make a donation at the time.

The online donation process is by far his most valuable ‘sales’ system on the website.

3. Excellent Information Architecture

The way that the information is laid out and presented makes it easy to use and, more importantly, to scan. Website visitors have the shortest attention span of any mode of communication, quickly jumping between pages and leaving sites where they cannot quickly find what they are looking for.

When you visit the Barack Obama home page, the information draws you in. You can quickly find what you are looking for, and it is easy to take action to learn more:

A subscription box is included at the top right hand side of the page, to join the mailing list, and a picture of Barack Obama and inspiring quote is included to build instant credibility. Of course, the ‘donate now’ button is visible immediately, as well as additional actions which he wants you to take. All this happens BEFORE you start scrolling down the page.

The main ‘banner’ of the page rotates the main messages and actions of the day. An eye catching banner is used with a strong headline and a clear call-to-action ‘learn more’ to encourage visitors to visit the landing page. Each banner links to a different targeted landing page, ensuring maximum response on every click taken, such as:

“Fight The Smears” Campaign:

And ‘Supporting The Open Convention’ campaign:

Every call-to-action on the site leads to a landing page which is setup to convert.

4. A Blog Is Used To Communicate Messages

Posts are added to the blog multiple times per day to communicate with supporters on a daily basis as well as providing a channel for supporters who only consume news through RSS aggregator software such as Feeddemon or Bloglines.

Blogs are one of the best methods of communicating and building relationships with people, and Obama is using his very effectively.

He is also taking advantage of Web 2.0 websites within his blog posts, such as Flickr, the photo sharing site:

And YouTube, the video sharing site:

Notice the integration of social bookmarking ‘quick links’ at the bottom of every blog post.

5. Social Networking Is Used To Maximise Exposure

One of the most impressive elements of Obama’s online marketing campaign is the reach achieved through social networking, which is one of the fastest growing and far reaching methods of online exposure available today.

If you scroll down to the bottom of Obama’s site you will see the following:

Barack Obama has an account with every high traffic social networking site on the Internet. More importantly, each of those accounts listed above are very active and drive traffic to the main website. This type of strategy is not for the faint hearted, and requires a significant amount of management to achieve the levels of success achieved by Barack Obama.

Not only does Barack Obama actively participate in all of the largest social networks online, but he owns his own social network, where supporters can ‘network’ with other supporters:

Of course I joined to see what it is all about:

Giving supporters a voice on his website is a masterstroke.

6. Mobile Marketing Is Used To Further His Message

Barack Obama includes a mobile subscription section on his website where you can join his SMS mailing list:

This links to the following landing page:

Notice how you can select the SMS updates you want to receive. That way, you can keep up with the latest updates on the topics which matter to you.

The best part about mobile marketing is that the deliverability is nearly 100%, that is, everybody opens a text message when they receive it.

Summary

If you have ever wondered what a perfect online marketing campaign looks like, just look at the Barack Obama campaign. Their online marketing team are implementing every online marketing strategy available, including social networking, search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing and a number of other strategies. Not only that, but their implementation is flawless.

The cost of running an online marketing campaign like Barack Obama’s would be outside of the budget and resources of most companies, but we can learn a lot about any particular strategy which we are thinking about implementing.

For example, if you are looking at ways to improve your website’s conversion rate, look at how the Obama website is designed. If you are looking at ways to implement social networking, check out the profile pages on MySpace or Facebook.

Start thinking about how you can implement what I have just spoken about in this article on your own website and online marketing campaign.

And most importantly…

TAKE ACTION!

Over the past few years we have tested and tracked dozens, if not hundreds, of different strategies online… everything from banner advertising to social bookmarking, and at the end of the day, implementing the core online marketing strategies effectively has proven to generate the maximum impact from online marketing efforts.

Of course you’ll hear about the rare online business that doesn’t have to use SEO or PPC to drive traffic, as they have a 100k+ database of people and JVs with other sites which command the same number of subscribers. But for a business starting out online, you want a strategy that is simple, actionable and not reliant on the goodwill of others (at least initially).

We’ve prepared a mindmap of the core strategies essential for succeeding online, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been online for years.

You can download the online marketing mindmap here.

And I guarantee that even the most experienced of online marketers aren’t maximising all areas outlined in the mindmap… its one thing to setup everything and get some traction, it’s another thing entirely to take your business into the stratosphere utilising the very same marketing channels.

For example, you can quite easily start making $1000 or $2000 per month from PPC advertising, but it’s much harder and requires more expertise and time to increase that to $20k or $30k per month… and that’s exactly what is required to market effectively online.

You don’t need to implement every single strategy available, but you do need to continually work to improve the return you are getting from every action you take.

And it isn’t just about improving your PPC performance… you also need to improve your website’s conversion rate, as well as your organic traffic. And taking what you learn from one marketing channel and implementing it in another.

The businesses which make the most money online are those that maximise every part of the online sales cycle, because they understand that PPC, SEO, website conversions and sales volumes are totally dependent on one another to survive in a fiercely competitive environment.

Download the online marketing mindmap here and start planning your online marketing strategy.

So what’s it really like to own a website which both generates profits for your business and helps (forces) it to grow?

Here’s a breakdown of a typical day of a successful website owner…

1. You Check Your Emails

You wake up in the morning and switch on your laptop (or PC), open your email account and check how your website has produced overnight.

If you sell direct online, how many sales were made?

If the aim is to generate sales leads, how many new leads have you received?

2. You Check Your Stats

You login to your Google Analytics account.

• How much traffic did you receive yesterday?
• Is it increasing or decreasing?
• Where did the traffic come from?
• Are there any areas of opportunity that small effort can result in big payoff?
• You implement.

3. You Check Your PPC Performance

You login to Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

• How many conversions did you receive?
• What is the CPA?
• Are you still profitable at this rate?
• How are your text-ad split tests going?
• You optimize.

4. You Check Your Rankings

You either run your ranking software or you manually type in your top keyword phrases.

• Are you still in the top 5 positions for your major keyword phrases?
• How are your competitors doing?
• Who has just broken into the top 5?
• What are they doing?
• You check their linking strategy.
• You review your strategy.

5. You Check Your SEO Strategy

You’re in the top position in Google, but you know that it is fiercely competitive.

• How many articles have you syndicated this week?
• Are you releasing a new press release this week?
• Are you social bookmarking your valuable content?
• Are you contacting other site owners to exchange links?
• What are you doing to maintain your rankings?

6. You Check Your Website’s Performance

You login to Google Website Optimizer.

• How is your website performing?
• What is your conversion rate?
• How is the latest split-testing going?
• Is it time to test a new version of your PPC landing page?
• Is it time to test a new version of your ‘money’ page on your main website?
• You setup new split tests.

7. You Check Your Content Strategy

You know that continually providing valuable content will give you the competitive advantage you need.

• What new content are you adding to your website?
• What new tools are you adding to your website?
• What can you do to build value to your prospects so that they trust you more?

8. You Check Your Emails Throughout the Day

You’ve setup your email account to automatically check for emails every 5 minutes. Expectations have now been set.

• You expect a new sale or a new sales lead every 30 minutes.
• If you haven’t received a new sale or a new lead in a couple of hours, you check that everything is okay.
• Is your website still up?
• Are your forms working?
• You audit.

9. You Review Your Email Strategy

You login to your email management system.

• How many new people have joined your email list today?
• What emails will they be receiving?
• How many people are now on your email list?
• What value-add can you send to them?
• How can you build the relationship with them?
• You write a new email.

10. You Look For New Sources of Traffic

Your sales process is refined. A new sale or lead comes through and it automatically goes into the sales funnel.

• How can you drive more prospects into the sales funnel?
• You research additional keyword phrases you can add to your PPC campaigns.
• You research additional keyword phrases you could be optimising for.
• You design new banner ads and place them on new sites.
• You track everything for ROI.

11. You Manage Your Business’ Growth

You continually try to balance the cost of growing your company vs the profit you are currently making. As your sales increase you need more staff and better systems to handle the growth.

• What are you doing to support this growth?
• What new systems are you putting in place?
• Are they scalable?
• What happens if your business doubles overnight (again)?
• Who do you need to hire?
• What do you need to outsource?

12. You Read Online Marketing News

You have a folder setup in your Firefox bookmarks toolbar with all of the online industry publications you follow. You right click and ‘open in all tabs’. You read all of the blog entries and find out what new developments are happening with SEO and PPC, especially Google.

• What new developments could affect your SEO rankings?
• What new developments could affect your PPC results?
• You review your strategy.

13. You Review Your Marketing And Education Strategy

Online marketing moves at an incredible pace. Staying ahead of your competitors requires strategic thinking and continual education. Your SEO rankings are supporting 5 to 10 full time staff.

• What if you lose those rankings?
• What backup strategies have you got in place?
• What are you doing to stay ahead of the curve?
• What do you need to learn to be successful tomorrow?
• Where is the online market going?
• How can you learn what you need to learn in the most efficient and effective manner possible?

So there you have it. The life in the day of a successful website owner.

It’s not easy, but it is fun.

Of course, if you use an online marketing agency to manage your strategy, you only have to check your emails and bank balance each day, the agency does the rest.

A successful website is one of the most exciting and profitable assets your business can own, because it generates profits and helps your business grow 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.

What are you doing to make your website successful?

When it comes to search engine optimization, getting other websites to link to your website is the most important factor in achieving top search engine rankings. Here is a list of 10 link building strategies which you should be implementing for top search engine rankings (in no particular order):

1. Write quality articles – write quality articles that other websites will want to post on their websites and link to. The higher the quality of the article, the more one-way links you’ll get. The best articles to write are ‘how-to’ and informational articles. Stay away from self-promotion.

2. Start a Wordpress blog – setup a Wordpress blog on your website and post articles to it once per week. It’s a great way to build the size of your website, keep your website content fresh and get incoming links. Plus Google loves Wordpress!

3. Syndicate your articles online – take the articles that you’ve posted to your blog and syndicate them on article directories such as Ezine Articles and Go Articles, so that other website owners can post them on their websites.

4. Submit your website to online directories – submit your website to free SEO friendly website directories for a quick way to start building one-way links to your website.

5. Submit your blog to blog directories – use RSS Submit software to submit your blog to blog directories. Use both the automatic and manual submission tools.

6. Exchange links with relevant websites – exchange links with high quality, relevant websites in your field. This can be extremely powerful, as long as you are very selective with whom you exchange links with.

7. Use social bookmarking – submit your blog posts and other high value content to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Aside from the one-way link you’ll get and the (short-term) top Google ranking, you can hit the ‘jackpot’ by getting to the first page of digg.com, where you’ll receive thousands of one-way links.

8. Syndicate press releases online – write newsworthy press releases and syndicate them online at press release syndication sites such as PRWeb. If the release is good enough, you can get a lot of one-way links to your site.

9. Post comments on industry blogs – post high value comments on other blogs in your industry to spark discussion. Even if the comments are ‘nofollowed’, you can still get links to your site from other bloggers that refer to your posts.

10. Link between your web pages – use contextual links in your website copy to link to other pages within your websites. Each of your pages should have some PageRank, so why not maximise it?

Do you have any other link building strategies?

Then post them in the comments section below.

There are so many topics to write about it is sometimes difficult to know what you want to read about. So, to help us out, please take this quick poll:

If you are currently implementing search engine optimization (SEO) for your website or are thinking about it, then this article will be worth tens of thousands of dollars for you.

Conducting effective keyword research from an SEO perspective is critical, because the next 12 months of SEO activities and investment will be focused on the words you identify before you start optimising.

The key to a successful SEO campaign is selecting keywords where a top ranking will earn you more profit per month than the cost of achieving and maintaining those rankings.

If you get it wrong, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars on achieving a top 10 ranking, only to find that the top ranking is not making you any money!

I’ve seen it many times… businesses optimising their site for a keyword which has high number of people searching those keywords, but an extremely low number of people actually buying.

Here are step by step instructional videos on how to use Google’s keyword research tools to identify highest value keyword phrases:

STEP 1: GOOGLE ADWORDS KEYWORD TOOL

In this video you’ll learn how to use the Google Keyword Research Tool to identify target keyword phrases for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

STEP 2: GOOGLE TRAFFIC ESTIMATOR

In this video you’ll learn how to combine the results from the Google Keyword Tool with the Google Traffic Estimator to identify highest value keyword phrases for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

By following these steps you will ensure that your SEO efforts are focused on those keywords that will generate maximum profits for your business.

As an online marketing agency we get a lot of small businesses contacting us to help them make money on the Internet. One of the core services we offer is PPC setup and management, with a focus on Google Adwords. Yet one of the most common statements we hear is:

“I’ve already tried pay-per-click advertising and it doesn’t work”

Immediately this sounds warning bells, as PPC advertising is one of the most profitable methods of advertising available (in fact, we’ve been able to generate more than 1,000 sales per day for some companies using PPC advertising).

After further questioning we find out that they have setup a Google Adwords campaign themselves (because Google makes it so easy) and have invested $500 or $1,000 in advertising, only to find that they could not achieve any results… and based on this they say PPC advertising doesn’t work!

Maybe it is because of the common misconception that ‘it is easy to make money online’. We’ve been hearing this for years now, and I admit that was one of the reasons I started in the online game… but I was wrong, even in the very beginning. Now, after many years in the online game I understand why it is difficult to make money online, and why it will become harder in years to come.

When you market on search engines, like Google, you have to be on the first page to be noticed, and that’s where the challenge lies. There are a maximum of 10 paid positions available to the entire country. That means that from all the advertisers in the country, only 10 can hold a first page position. That means that only those advertisers which know what they are doing can afford to compete in a market where the top positions are dominated by clicks of that cost between $2 and $7 per click.

That’s why you need to work with a professional if you’re serious about succeeding in the online game, because a professional knows how to work with your current advertising budget to get the most out of your advertising spend.

And nine times out of ten, when we do take over a PPC campaign that was setup by a beginner, we find the following mistakes nearly every time:

1. Not enough keywords being used – identifying the most profitable keyword phrases first requires that you build a keyword library of all of the possible keyword phrases that somebody who is interested in your service would type into Google. Most beginners use only 20 or 30 keywords in total, where the minimum for most small campaigns should be 1,000 to 2,000 keyword phrases.

2. Incorrect use of targeting – using exact match, phrase match and broad match correctly will increase your positioning and decrease your average cost-per-click (CPC).

3. Poorly constructed text ads – writing effective text ads, utilising proven marketing principles, will increase your click-through-rate (CTR), improve your quality score and, in turn, decrease your average CPC.

4. Not split-testing text ads – the only way to tell if one text ad is better than another is to split test those ads, track the results and identify which combination of words produced the best results.

5. Not geo-targeting campaigns – geo-targeting, especially for a service company is critical in getting maximum ROI from advertising spend. The last thing you want is to pay for website visitors which are in locations that you cannot service.

6. No continual optimisation – the hardest month for PPC advertising, and the lowest ROI, is in the first month, because it is during this month that you are experimenting to identify the keywords which produce the most profits for your business. Done incorrectly, the first month can cost thousands of dollars with no results at all. But once the ‘money words’ have been identified, continual bid management and optimisation is required to increase ROI from the monthly advertising spend.

7. Conversions are not being tracked – tracking conversions is the most important factor in PPC advertising, because this is how you measure the success of all of the previous 6 points in the campaign. Most importantly, when you track conversions at the keyword level you can increase spend on the keywords which are producing results and decrease spend on the keywords which a not producing results, increasing your ROI.

Without implementing ALL of the above points efficiently and with expertise it is virtually impossible for a small business to compete in an increasingly competitive online market place.

In the last 12 months we have seen the cost of PPC advertising increasing steadily, with the competition in some markets so fierce that the average cost-per-click (CPC) more than doubling in the last 12 months.

Pay-per-click advertising is rapidly becoming a marketing channel dominated by online marketing experts. When a beginner tries to run a PPC campaign on their own, competing against seasoned professionals, their budget is quickly burnt with no results to show for it. And now that the cost of a first page PPC listing costs a minimum of $2 to $7 per click how can a beginner afford NOT to use the services of a professional to manage their PPC campaign and minimise their risk?

If you are only just starting to think about creating an online business for yourself, it’s understandable if you feel intimidated by the sheer number of people already out there doing exactly the same thing.

How can you compete with people who have already set up shop and have a good base of customers?

Everyone has something to offer, and the key to success online is to build a business around something you enjoy – something you have a natural affinity for.  It’s easier to become an expert in this kind of subject, and becoming an expert is what will get you noticed and established.

Take the time to build a business of real worth.  You don’t have to dive in the deep end and build your own website.  Why not start with your own blog instead?  If you don’t have any products of your own to promote then join a website which grants free access to the best affiliate programs out there.  People often start earning an income online by becoming affiliates for programs that interest them.

You can also write articles for other websites that point back to your own site or blog.  The more work you do and the more you learn, the more other people will start to recognise you as someone who knows what they are talking about.

It’s good to start out with some sort of plan of what you would like to achieve.  This can be altered, added to or changed as you go along, but it will at least point you in a good direction to begin with.

Another aspect of establishing yourself comes with being willing to learn what is necessary to stand a better chance of earning more money.  Subscribe to a few free newsletters in your field of interest.  Bookmark a few good blogs and websites and revisit them constantly.  Keeping an eye on the competition will give you a better chance of spotting a gap in the market which you could exploit yourself.

It will take time to establish yourself online, but you shouldn’t just concentrate on the destination.  If you enjoy the journey you will learn more en route.

It’s possible to make a lot of money from a blog, but if that’s your goal you need to be thinking long term and have a good base from which to start.

Firstly you need a subject for your blog.  Many people make the mistake of writing about anything and everything, but if you are serious about getting your blog indexed by Google, showing up in search results and getting plenty of visitors, then you need to focus on a specific subject.

It stands to reason that if you are going to write about something every day or two for what could prove to be many months and hopefully even years, it needs to be something you are very interested in.  There are two main reasons for this:

•    If you don’t have a passion for your subject you will find it hard to constantly think of new things to write
•    You will instinctively know what other people who like the subject are looking for, and will be better able to provide it for them

This second point relates especially to monetising your blog, which is virtually a necessity if you want to make some serious cash from it.  If you love your subject you’ll know what you want and need from it, so you’ll know what to offer others too.

When it comes to setting up your blog you have two main options.  You can either set it up using a free blogging platform and account, or you can use the free software and set it up using your own domain name and server.

The second option will cost you money, but the first option will almost certainly cost you money in the long term, as many blogging platforms are very picky over what they will allow you to do with your blog.  If you are serious about building it up as an ongoing concern, with an eye towards monetising it properly, then it’s best to pay the small amount required to get your own domain and get it properly hosted every month.

When you come to actually creating your blog you should remember two words and two words only – quality content.  This is ultimately what will draw people to your site and keep them coming back for more.  Not every post needs to be a long drawn out epic, but the more you can involve your visitors the better.

To this end you can use a variety of techniques to keep people coming back.  You can tell people what your next post is about; offer them a free report if they sign up to your newsletter, or simply encourage them to bookmark your blog so they can revisit more easily.

All the best blogs are created over time, not overnight.  If you are prepared for the long haul and you genuinely love your subject, you have every chance of creating a successful blog that will last the test of time.

If you’re trying to sell something online it would make sense to target as many people as possible in the hope of making lots of sales, right?

Actually no – nothing could be further from the truth.  Your best bet is to target a much smaller group of people with an offer which is specifically tailored to meet their needs.

Consider this.  If you had a new golf club you wanted to sell, you would go and find someone who plays golf to see if they wanted to buy it.  You wouldn’t try and sell it to just anyone, and exactly the same principle applies online.

The good news is that niche markets are smaller, easier to target and generally present much less in the way of competition.  If you can target a niche audience in the right way you’ll have a much better chance of making some significant sales than if you try and reach out to anyone and everyone.

But in order to make those sales you need to make sure your site is found by the people who want to buy what you have to offer.  To do this it’s very important that you have the right kind of content on your site.

Include plenty of useful information that will appeal to those people, and make sure it is rich in relevant keywords.  So if your site sells rare golf clubs, you could write an article on the benefits of using rare golf clubs, making sure that term is used several times throughout the piece.  By using longer key phrases you will stand a much better chance of being found when people search for information on your subject area in the search engines.

It’s also worth joining a couple of related forums and taking part in some discussions to gain some knowledge of what your niche market is like.  You can often include a link to your website in your forum signature, although you should always check with each individual forum to make sure they do allow this.  So long as you are a worthy forum member yourself this should bring you an extra stream of qualified traffic.

You might think that if you’re selling rare golf clubs you’re better off targeting everyone who plays golf, but this isn’t actually true.  Not everyone will be interested in rare clubs, which is what makes this a niche interest.  The more precise you can be with your targeting – via forums, keywords, advertising and so on – the better your visitors to sales ratio will be.

A good solid email list can be worth a lot of money to you as an internet marketer. With this in mind it’s obviously in your best interests to get as many people signed up for your list as possible – legally and legitimately.

But people won’t add their names and email addresses to your list unless you have something to offer them in return. This is where free offers, free newsletters and free downloads come into play.

It should be noted however that simply offering something for free won’t persuade everyone to sign up. You need to provide something that has value, and preferably something that they cannot get anywhere else.

Many internet marketers offer a free weekly newsletter to keep in touch with their customers, and send an extra bonus when someone signs up. This is typically a free report or e-book which is targeted specifically at the type of customer the marketer wants to have on their list.

For example, let’s say you have a wide range of e-books to sell on the subject of search engine optimisation. You could offer a free newsletter giving away weekly tips on how to get more traffic to your website and offer a free report in exchange for an email address, revealing the three mistakes almost every website owner makes which cost them mountains of traffic.

Anyone with their own website would no doubt be interested in receiving this free report, as well as the regular weekly tips. If they benefit as a result (remember that your free products should be valuable to the person receiving them) there is every chance they will buy something from you in the future.

Once you have a good solid offer you need to make sure as many people who are interested in that subject area will see it. Put a sign up box prominently on the top half of your website’s home page; put one on your blog if it covers the same subject; try writing articles on traffic generation and SEO tips and including a link to your website where people can sign up, and post them to various article directories.

You won’t be able to build a huge emailing list overnight, but with continued effort your list will grow over time. It’s worth remembering that if you make an offer available to everyone on your email list, you are likely to get a huge take up rate, because the people on that list know you and trust your information.

That’s why a huge email list is worth working for.

A successful brand is the marriage of your own strengths with what your customer base wants.  That’s why it’s essential that you don’t rush into any kind of business before you decide what your brand is all about.

So what exactly is a brand?

Put simply, a brand is essentially something that you can offer to your customers that no one else can.  They say there’s nothing new under the sun, but you need to find a fresh spin on something that is already being offered by other people.  Think about the difference between the brands of Pepsi and Coca Cola, for example.  They are both unique, very different brands for a very similar kind of drink, but most people would agree they look for one or the other when they go shopping to buy that drink.

So you need to start with what you want to sell, and research that market thoroughly.  What can you offer that isn’t already being done?  It may be a specific way of selling the product.  It may be a unique recipe or way of presenting the product.  It could be the fact that you supply a free gift with each purchase.  You might decide to market your offering in a different way, to reach a slightly different audience.

All these factors can influence how you create your own brand – and they are just the beginning.

A brand can also relate to how your product or service is perceived visually.  Think about all the big name companies in the world… and how recognisable their logos are.  A logo can strengthen your brand and make it more familiar, which is essential to your long term success if you are selling a consumable product which you will want people to come back and buy more of.

A brand can also include a slogan of some kind, which encapsulates the things that make you different from your competition.  Together with a logo these aspects can form a very strong marketing base to work from.

The key to creating a successful brand is to research the market you want to enter, to decide how you can make your own mark.  Don’t try to copy what is already out there – apart from getting yourself into trouble you won’t succeed that way.

Be daring and do something different.  Make your brand stand out for all the right reasons, and remember it’s essential to put in the time to create a strong brand in the first place.

If you do this, it will pay you back many times over for years to come.

We always hear that the content of a website is the key to its success. Without good articles, news, blogs and similar items, a website is doomed to fail.

But what about the graphics? How important are they to the overall success of a website?

Let’s look at an example. When you are surfing the internet and you come across a website, what makes you decide whether to stay or carry on surfing? If a website uses neon colors and flashing banners to try and catch your attention, the chances are you will click away quickly. But if that site is well presented, with a good mix of graphics and text, you may well stay for a closer look.

Content is important, but the graphics help to balance out the text, breaking it up and making it more readable. They also support the text – so they shouldn’t just be there for the sake of it. All good graphics have a purpose, which is to draw the casual surfer in and get them involved in the site – and preferably encourage them to order something.

Graphics can create a compelling image and persuade a surfer to buy your product. Think of ‘Buy it Now’ buttons, for example. These sometimes appear with the graphic of a mouse arrow over the top of the button, prompting the surfer to click onto the next page to make their payment.

Graphics can also make all the difference between a sale and a near miss, especially when it comes to products like e-books. Because e-books are downloaded straight to the buyer’s computer, there is no eye catching cover or real solid product to show the purchaser. This problem is solved by creating a graphic of a book which has a stunning cover to promote the product itself. The color of this graphic often matches the overall color tones of the whole website – especially if used on a so called ‘mini site’, which promotes a single product only.

Competent graphics can also help surfers navigate a website, as they can indicate pages of interest, drop down menus, new products and much more.

In short, even though text is important, a website with huge chunks of text and little or no graphics will not attract many visitors – at least not those who stay for any length of time. Conversely, an attractive looking website which has a nice balance of text broken up by graphics will keep people browsing for far longer – and the longer they stay on the site, the more likely it is that they’ll come back again.